With the recent Adobe acquisition of Allegorithmic, I researched alternatives to Substance Painter and Designer. One of the most prominent entries was Mixer by Quixel, which is currently available completely free while in beta form. Quixel Mixer is a PBR texture creation tool where you create textures using an easy to use layer based system. It integrates with their Megascans texture collection, although it also supports importing your own PBR textures, plenty of which are available here for free.
Quixel Mixer Features:
Mix & match.
Mix textures to quickly come up with brand new materials, and match colors and reflectance values with a single click. The non-destructive layer system keeps things simple and tidy, and happy accidents have never been easier. Texturing is more fun than ever!
Seamless painting experience.
Unleash your creative potential with buttery-smooth painting. Accurately perform straight brush strokes with canvas or camera aligned painting in orthographic mode. With multi-channel painting and 32 bit sculpting, designing tileable PBR materials has never been easier.
Zero learning curve.
Mixer is designed from the ground up to be artist-friendly, intuitive, and extremely fast to pick up. Whip up stunning mixes in minutes, or design deeply advanced materials with incredible control—whether you are in a hurry or want to indulge, Mixer has got you covered.
Complete Megascans integration.
Instantly access the entire Megascans library directly within Mixer. Leverage Megascans to guarantee photorealistic base textures, or transform them into fantastic stylized assets effortlessly. Mixer and Megascans together give you virtually limitless creative possibilities.
Design any material imaginable.
With its advanced painting, sculpting, masking, and blending features, Mixer transforms the creation of realistic and hand-painted textures into a rich, creative, and boundless experience. Organic or hard-surface, modern or medieval, man-made or alien—anything is possible.
Channel pack & export.
Create custom channel-packed export presets with your own naming conventions, and export in 8, 16 or 32 bit in any file format. Or save your materials directly to Quixel Bridge, to leverage powerful integrations with all major 3D software.
Quixel is currently completely free while in beta, with downloads available for Windows and Mac OS… sorry Linux users. Watch Quixel in action in the video below.